McKinnon's magician

Summary:Who exactly is new Westpac IT executive Sarv Girn, who has newly been poached from Commonwealth Bank of Australia? Is he just a point man for the IT integration of St George, or is he "McKinnon's magician", the boy genius who will lead the bank to its IT nirvana?

On this week's Patch Monday the theme is "banking" with a major in "politics" as we dive to the murky bottom of the Australian banking IT scene.

Who exactly is new Westpac IT executive Sarv Girn, who has newly been poached from Commonwealth Bank of Australia? Is he just a point man for the IT integration of St George, or is he "McKinnon's magician", the boy genius who will lead the bank to its IT nirvana?

In addition, what happened to National Australia Bank chief information officer Michelle Tredenick?

On this week's episode we also discuss the latest round of layoffs at EDS Australia and the state of morale at the company.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has released Internet Explorer 8 and a Darwin man has been jailed for three years for hacking the NT Government systems and causing millions of dollars in damage. But we have to feel some sympathy for the poor guy; he apparently lost his fiancée and was drunk when it all went down.

Chris started his journalistic adventure in 2006 as the Editor of Builder AU after originally joining CBS as a programmer. After a Canadian sojourn, he returned in 2011 as the Editor of TechRepublic Australia, and is now the Australian Editor of ZDNet.